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Roy J. Harris – 2016

Roy J. Harris joined the Post-Dispatch in 1926 after a brief stint at the St. Louis Star, and during his 41 years at the Post, his work helped bring the paper four Pulitzer Prizes over a 15 year period. He personally shared one of those Pulitzers with a reporter with the Chicago Daily News. Their joint investigation exposed the fact that at least 51 newspaper employees around Illinois were on the state’s payroll during the gubernatorial term of Dwight Green. Other Pulitzers were won for stories about the Centralia mine disaster, St. Louis election fraud and smoke pollution in the City of St. Louis. 

Margaret Wolf Freivogel – 2016

Margaret Wolf Freivogel wore many hats during her journalism career. At the Post-Dispatch, she was a reporter, Washington correspondent, assistant managing editor and assistant chief of the paper’s Washington Bureau. She left the Post in 2005 and in 2008 helped establish The St. Louis Beacon, one of the nation’s first digital non-profit newsrooms. And through a merger in 2013, Margie became editor of St. Louis Public Radio, from which she retired in 2016. Among her professional recognitions, she received the National Press Club Washington Correspondent’s Award, the Missouri School of Journalism Honor Medal and the American Bar Association Gavel Award.

Sarah Leen – 2015

Sarah Leen was appointed director of photography at National Geographic magazine in May 2013, becoming the first woman to hold that job in the National Geographic Society’s 125-year history. For 27 years prior, the St. Louis-area native worked as a freelance photographer for National Geographic magazine, and in 2004, she joined the magazine’s staff as a senior photo editor.

In 1979, as a student at Mizzou, Leen received the College Photographer of the Year award.

She went on to work as a staff photographer for the Topeka (Kansas) Capital-Journal and the Philadelphia Inquirer. A book of her work, American Back Roads, was published by National Geographic in 2000.

Jeff Leen – 2015

Jeff Leen began working as the investigations editor of The Washington Post in 2003 after having joined the Post’s Investigative Unit as a reporter in 1997. The next year, he was the lead reporter on an investigation of D.C. police shootings that won the 1999 Pulitzer Gold Medal for Meritorious Public Service, the paper’s first since Watergate. Leen worked as a reporter or an editor on investigations that were honored with seven Pulitzer Prizes. His individual honors include the Missouri Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism. Jeff graduated from Ritenour Senior High School in suburban St. Louis in 1975, and his first job in journalism was at the St. Louis County Star. Prior to joining the Post, he worked for 10 years on the investigative team for the Miami Herald.

Victor “Vic Vac” Vaccarezza – 2015

Victor “Vic Vac” Vacarezza began his career in art and cartooning while still a student at Washington University working part time at the St. Louis Republic. One of his first duties was providing sketches of murder victims, which required him to work at the city morgue. A stint in the Navy in WWI provided his first real break, as he did a regular strip for the newspaper at Great Lakes Training Station titled “Salty Steve.” When Vaccarezza returned to St. Louis, his former newspaper had been absorbed by the Globe-Democrat, so he went to work for the Globe, beginning a 50-year career there.

At the Globe, he rose to the position of chief art director, retiring at age 76. He produced a Sunday comic strip, “Shanty Lane,” drew thumbnail sketches that graced the white space between letters on the paper’s “Mail Bag” page, and created the chaotic cartoon art for which he became famous that graced the paper’s Sunday magazine covers. He also drew a nationally syndicated strip, “June Bride,” for four years beginning in 1946. Vic Vac, as he signed his work, confessed to an interviewer that the strip’s title character was modeled after his wife Rose.

Bill McClellan – 2015

Bill McClellan began writing a regular column in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1983, after originally being hired to write entertainment listings, followed by a promotion to covering the city police beat. Many of his columns over the ensuing years were based on the premise of championing the underdog—adding his humor and empathy to his unassuming manner.

McClellan began his education at the University of Illinois before he was drafted in 1969 and consequently served as a Marine combat correspondent for ten months in Vietnam and two months in Japan.  After the Marines, McClellan attended Arizona State University where he picked up his first journalism class in the bar where he worked, from a journalism professor who was a regular customer. While at the Post, McClellan penned several books, one a true-crime book entitled Body of Evidence and four books in a collection of his columns.

He was also a regular panelist on the KETC program “Donnybrook.”